Storming the Holy
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Proper 28, Year B
1 Samuel 1:4-20 • 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-25(15-18)19-25 • Mark 13:1-8
A stand-up comedian tells a story about offering to be an altar server at her childhood church. When she heard that anyone wanting to be an “altar boy” should speak to the priest, she and her friend knocked on the priest’s door. They said they wanted to be “altar boys, or altar girls, or altar people, or whatever.” But they soon learned that only boys could be “altar boys,” and the priest closed the door in the girls’ faces. The way the comedian tells it, she and her furious friend ran to the church and past the altar rail, where no one but the priest and altar boys were supposed to go. The girls touched everything they weren’t supposed to touch. As she says proudly, “We got our girl cooties all over that altar.”*
This story might be exaggerated for dramatic effect. But, it tells an emotional truth. It captures the pain of offering oneself for sacred service and being excluded from sacred places. It also captures the exhilaration of storming a place set apart for holiness.
In today’s first reading, Hannah has her own storming-the-sanctuary moment. Hannah and many people around her interpret Hannah’s inability to conceive a child as rejection by the Lord. As the narrator puts it, “the Lord had closed [Hannah’s] womb.” Hannah’s husband has married a second wife, who scorns Hannah.
Hannah’s husband tries to console her by giving her a double portion of the meat that he offers to the Lord on their annual pilgrimage to the Lord’s sanctuary in Shiloh. But Hannah refuses to eat it. Hurt that Hannah rejects his small offering of love, he asks, “Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” He interprets Hannah’s desperate desire for children as a rejection of him.
Then Hannah does something bold. She stands up and presents herself directly to the Lord. She seems to be standing at the entrance to the tent that sheltered the Ark of the Covenant—that paradoxical container of God’s uncontainable power. That’s where the Lord had promised to meet the priests after their twice-daily offerings, and to speak to them (Exo 29.42). Our reading uses the word “temple” for this tent, but loosely. The temple proper wasn’t built until three generations later, in Jerusalem. Until then, faithful Israelites made annual visits to Shiloh to stand in God’s presence, offering their sacrifices and their whole selves to the God who delivered and sustained them.
It’s very telling that Hannah stands up to offer herself, while Eli the priest is sitting down. The usual posture for offering sacrifices was to stand. But Eli the priest is getting on in years, and needs to have a seat. Eli’s two sons have taken on a lot of priestly duties, but they’re not doing a great job. We find out later that instead of burning the fat of the people’s offerings for the Lord, Eli’s sons are roasting it for themselves. Instead of giving the boiled meat back to the people to consume, Eli’s sons eat the best portions themselves (1 Sam 2:12-17).
From Eli’s seat by the curtain at the entrance to the tent of God’s presence, Eli the priest sees, but doesn’t fully recognize, Hannah’s wholehearted offering of herself to God. There’s no rhetorically fancy, liturgical language in Hannah’s prayer. To put it in Episcopalian terms, Hannah’s prayer has no introductory phrase like, “Almighty God” or “Blessed Lord.” Her prayer has no closing formula, like “one God, for ever and ever.” Instead, Hannah weeps bitterly and prays directly from her distress. When she uses words, Hannah makes God a straightforward deal: If God pays attention to her suffering and gives her a male child, then she’ll give that child straight back to God. Hannah speaks these words silently, in a sort of inner sanctuary she makes for herself.
Eli the priest isn’t used to this style of prayer. Eli speaks in liturgical formulas, like “Go in peace.” He sees Hannah’s lips moving and assumes she’s drunk. It’s hard to detect the sass in Hannah’s reply to Eli, because we use such formal translations of Scripture in our worship. But Hannah tells him smartly: “I’m not drinking anything, I’m pouring out something—and that something is my soul.”
Unlike the priests at Shiloh, or her husband on their annual pilgrimage, Hannah offers God a desperate pouring out of her soul, and a bold intimacy with God that allows for bargaining. When her son Samuel is born, Hannah fulfills her part of the bargain and gives him to Eli to raise at Shiloh. Samuel becomes a prophet and deliverer who reopens the people’s communication with and trust in God (1 Sam 7).
After Hannah receives this gift, she turns back to the language of liturgical prayer to express her thanks. This prayer—which we chanted after the first reading—isn’t something Hannah composed all on her own. Its refrains would have been familiar to the Israelites: “The bows of the mighty are broken, / but the weak are clothed in strength,” and “God raises the poor from the dust; / and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” This example of public, conventional prayer that Hannah recites was an ancient Israelite equivalent of the hymn Amazing Grace—familiar words that tell a resonant truth about how God acts in the world. For Anglicans and Episcopalians, Hannah’s prayer is like the Magnificat—the Song of Mary that’s part of our tradition of daily evening prayer. By praying in this way, Hannah expresses her understanding that the gift she received from God wasn’t a gift for her alone, but a gift to be offered back to God and God’s people. What she receives from God after pouring out her soul isn’t simply a perk or reward for her faithful audacity. What Hannah receives from God is the opportunity to participate in something bigger than her own distress.
That’s a gift available to all of us here, In this place, however we pray.
***
What really touches me in Hannah’s story, though, are the imperfect and often rejected offerings of other characters. Hannah’s husband offers her extra food as a sign of his affection, and she rejects it. Eli has offered his whole life to maintain the Lord’s house at Shiloh, but he no longer has the strength to perform his duties, and his sons are destroying his legacy. God will replace them with Samuel. There’s also Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah, who extends herself raising many children, but who receives less love than she deserves.
I wonder if it wasn’t just Hannah’s desperate prayer, but these seemingly rejected offerings, that God noticed and cherished as well.
When a disciple of Jesus sees the Temple that was finally built, rebuilt, and lavishly renovated in the thousand years after today’s first reading, the disciple says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” More impressive than these large stones are the daily self-offerings, the yearly gifts, and other gestures of faith, hope, and love, that somehow amount to triumphs.
*This story is from Julia Sweeney’s stand-up special, Letting Go of God.
~The Reverend Dr. Lora Walsh
